Audio Book Review: Burn Our Bodies Down by Rory Power

"[A] deliriously creepy tale...that'll keep your nightmares up at night." --Melissa Albert, New York Times bestselling author of The Hazel Wood

From the author of the New York Times bestseller Wilder Girls comes a feverishly twisty thriller about a girl whose past has always been a mystery--until she decides to return to her mother's hometown . . . where history has a tendency to repeat itself.

Ever since Margot was born, it's been just her and her mother, struggling to get along. But that's not enough for Margot. She wants family. She wants a past. And she may have just found the answer: A photograph, pointing her to a town called Phalene. Only, when Margot gets there, it's not what she bargained for.

As soon as they see her face, everyone in town knows who Margot belongs to. It's unmistakable--she's a Nielsen. And when a mysterious girl who could be Margot's twin is pulled from a fire, Margot realizes that her mother left Phalene for a reason. But was it to hide her past? Or was it to protect Margot from what's still there?

The only thing Margot knows for sure is there's poison in their family tree, and their roots are dug so deeply into Phalene that now that she's there, she might never escape.

Praise for Wilder Girls:
4 STARRED REVIEWS!

"Fresh and horrible and beautiful....readers will be consumed and altered by Wilder Girls."-NPR

"This thrilling saga...is sure to be one of the season's most talked-about books, in any genre."--EW

"The perfect kind of story for our current era."--Hypable

"Your new favorite book."--Cosmopolitan

I read Wilder Girls when it first came out, and it was creepy as hell. I borrowed the audio version when I learned that the author Rory Powers had another book called Burn Our Bodies Down I rushed to be the first in line at my local library. I read it all in one sitting And damn, I haven’t read the print version, so I have no idea, but the audiobook was SOOOO good. I will tell people to listen as it sounds like (to me) to be a cast of people talking. If you have CI Implants, it is nowhere near as confusing as Lincoln in the bardo, but I could tell there was more than one person.

If you heard anything about Wilder Girls, you would know how creepy it is. That ending creeped me out for days. After I was halfway through Burn Down Our Bodies, I lost hope that it would be as creepy as Wilder Girls. I was mistaken. The twist is not till the end, but it is mind-bending once you figure it out. I first thought I had heard it wrong, but after I got a hearing friend to listen I had it right the first time and it blew me away. I realized how brilliant that whole scenario was after playing that one part back three times. and to get a hearing person to listen.

In my years of how difficult it is to write about something like Rory Powers did (twice) and make it believable. When you construct a world, you have to make the readers feel it COULD happen. The reader has to be able to suspend disbelief. If not, then well, I think we all have seen books that were not…well written. I have seen some stories that I am just like, seriously? And some books, such as Amish Zombies in Space, leave me with my mouth on the floor in how well the author wrote the story. Now Rory Powers is on that list that can make such a book come to life. I mean, come on, I know that I can not have been the only one creeped out by the ending of Wilder Girls. AND the world building up to that point was so everything made sense, but you still got creeped out.

One thing that I would do almost anything to know is how she came up with her ideas. The complete fertilizer to make food grow on the farm again that destroyed the crops and made the woman who owned the farm get pregnant on the cellar level is …mind-bending.

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